for Solid Minerals

The Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) announced today the completion of a project for electronic storage and imaging of solid minerals data. The announcement was made in Denver at the Royalty Policy Committee meeting.

By using electronic retrieval, more than 100,000 solid mineral leases and logical mining unit (LMU) documents can be easily retrieved. Completion of this project makes "one-stop-shopping" available to customers who need information on solid minerals leases. Information can now be retrieved from the MMS’ Royalty Management Program’s optical library and provided to customers immediately.

This electronic system uses state-of-the-art technology such as optical imaging to enhance customer service. The time needed to research a specific request has been greatly reduced. Previously, customers searched among different files (lease, logical mining unit, company and lease accounts) to get solid minerals information because they were not centrally located. Now, the documents/images are integrated into two file types, the lease and logical mining unit files. Also, the new integrated system has eliminated the need for solid mineral analysts to manually retrieve, research and replace hard copy files.

The system is flexible and information can be retrieved quickly using a combination of search criteria. The user can search for a specific document without having to page through an entire file of adjudication actions. Information can be retrieved by lease number, agency-assigned number, commodity, or specific action such as lease renewal, or royalty rate reduction. In addition, documents contained in the solid mineral company and lease account status files have been integrated, eliminating 30,000 pieces of unnecessary paper.

The solid minerals imaging project provides the foundation for an automated workflow process that will track incoming, ongoing and completed work, reduce paperwork, and generate statistical reports. The new system provides accessibility to legal documents such as adjudication actions, appeals, judicial decisions, and company data. These documents are the source for critical lease and LMU data.

The MMS is the federal agency that manages the Nation’s natural gas, oil and other mineral resources on the Outer Continental Shelf, and collects, accounts for and last year disbursed $6 billion in revenues from offshore federal mineral leases and from onshore mineral leases on federal and Indian lands.